Inspector Zen receives the order he has been dreading all his professional life: his next posting is to Sicily. Set against the backdrop of the 3000 year old city of Catania, Blood Rain reveals Aurelio Zen at his most desperate and driven.

A Long Finish: An Aurelio Zen Mystery

After his adventures in Cosi Fan Tutti, Aurelio Zen finds himself back in Rome, sneezing in a damp wine cellar and being given another unorthodox assignment - to release the jailed scion of an important wine-growing family.

Cosi Fan Tutti: An Aurelio Zen Mystery, Book 5

Neopolitan businessmen, politicians, and eminent mafiosi are assassinated as someone takes literally the job of cleaning up the city's tarnished image. In this mystery, Aurelio Zen discovers that in '90s 'New Italy', things are still the same.

Aurelio Zen: Dead Lagoon

Aurelio Zen returns to his native Venice to investigate the disappearance of a rich American resident but he soon learns that, amid the hazy light and shifting waters of the lagoon, nothing is what it seems. As Zen is drawn deeper into the complex and ambiguous mysteries surrounding the discovery of a skeletal corpse on an ossuary island in the north lagoon, he is also forced to confront a series of disturbing revelations about his own life.

End Games

Italian police detective Aurelio Zen is posted to remote Calabria, at the toe of the Italian boot, on a routine assignment. But what he encounters there is anything but routine. Beneath the surface of a tight-knit community, violent forces are at work. Zen is determined to find a way to penetrate the code of silence and uncover the truth behind a brutal murder. His mission is complicated by another secret that has drawn strangers from the other side of the world - a hunt for buried treasure.

Cabal: Aurelio Zen, Book 3

When, one dark night in November, Prince Ludovico Ruspanti fell 150 feet to his death in the chapel at St. Peter's, Rome, there were a number of questions to be answered. Inspector Aurelio Zen finds that getting the answers isn't easy, as witness after witness is mysteriously silenced - by violent death. To crack the secret of the Vatican, Zen must penetrate the most secret place of all: the Cabal.

Aurelio Zen: Vendetta

Inspector Zen has a problem: an impossible murder, recorded on the closed-circuit video of Oscar Burolo's top-security Sardinian fortress. As Zen gets to work, he is once again plunged into a menacing and violent world where his own life is soon at risk.

Ratking: Aurelio Zen, Book 1

A powerful industrialist, Ruggiero Miletti, is kidnapped. Inspector Zen is transferred to Perugia to take over the case - but finds that there are many obstacles in his way. The local authorities see him as an interloper, and the victim’s family, one of the most powerful in Italy, seem content to let Miletti languish in the hands of his abductors. Zen has crossed swords with the establishment before - and lost. Can he succeed this time?

Game of Mirrors: Commissario Montalbano, Book 18

Inspector Montalbano and his colleagues are stumped when two bombs explode outside empty warehouses - one of which is connected to a big-time drug dealer. Meanwhile the alluring Liliana Lombardo is trying to seduce the inspector over red wine and arancini. Between pesky reporters, amorous trysts, and cocaine kingpins, Montalbano feels as if he's being manipulated on all fronts.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror

This dark psychological fantasy is more than a moral tale. It is also a product of its time, drawing on contemporary theories of class, evolution and criminality, and the secret lives behind Victorian propriety, to create a unique form of urban Gothic.

By Its Cover: Commissario Guido Brunetti, Book 23

One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out of several rare books. After a round of questioning, the case seems clear: The culprit must be the man who requested the volumes, an American professor from a Kansas university. The only problem-- the man fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials, the American professor doesn't exist.

The Heart of the Matter

Scobie, a police officer in a West African colony, is a good and honest man. But when he falls in love, he is forced into a betrayal of everything that he has ever believed in, and his struggle to maintain the happiness of two women destroys him.

The Jewels of Paradise

Caterina Pellegrini is a native Venetian, and like so many of them, she’s had to leave home to pursue her career elsewhere, mostly abroad. With a doctorate in baroque opera from Vienna, she lands in Birmingham, England, as a research fellow and assistant professor. Birmingham, however, is no Venice, so when she gets word of a position back home, Caterina jumps at the opportunity. The job is an unusual one.

Angelica's Smile: Inspector Montalbano, Book 17

A rash of burglaries has Inspector Salvo Montalbano stumped. The criminals are so brazen that their leader, the anonymous Mr. Z, startssending the Sicilian inspector menacing letters. Among those burgled is the young and beautiful Angelica Cosulich, who reminds the inspector of the love-interest in Ludovico Ariosto's chivalric romance, Orlando Furioso. Besotted by Angelica's charms, Montalbano imagines himself back in the medieval world of jousts and battles.

A Florentine Death: Michele Ferrara, Book 1

Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara knows that the beautiful surface of his adopted city, Florence, hides dark undercurrents. When called in to investigate a series of brutal and apparently random murders, his intuition is confirmed. Distrusted by his superiors and pilloried by the media, Ferrara finds time running out as the questions pile up. Is there a connection between the murders and the threatening letters he has received? Are his old enemies, the Calabrian Mafia, involved?

The Dark Vineyard: A Mystery of the French Countryside

A prolific journalist, Martin Walker has crafted a mystery series that deftly blends the stylings of Peter Mayle and Alexander McCall Smith. Chief Bruno Courreges loves life in his small French village. One day his idyll is disturbed when a local research station for genetically modified crops is burned down. An enclave of environmentalists seems to be the most likely culprit, but soon Bruno uncovers evidence that makes the case infinitely more complicated.

Falling in Love

Donna Leon's Death at La Fenice, the first novel in her beloved Commissario Guido Brunetti series, introduced listeners to the glamorous and cutthroat world of opera and one of Italy's finest living sopranos, Flavia Petrelli - then a suspect in the poisoning of a renowned German conductor. Years after Brunetti cleared her name, Flavia has returned to Venice and La Fenice to sing the lead in Tosca.

The Crowded Grave: A Mystery of the French Countryside

Martin Walker’s novels starring Chief of Police Bruno Courrèges are a boon to Francophiles and mystery lovers around the world. In The Crowded Grave, Bruno is up to his ears in trouble after a local archaeological dig unearths a corpse with a bullet in its head. Further complicating matters are a meddlesome local magistrate, animal rights activists, and a missing professor - not to mention two lovely ladies vying for Bruno’s affections.

The Lady From Zagreb

A beautiful actress, a rising star of the giant German film company UFA, now controlled by the Propaganda Ministry. The very clever, very dangerous propaganda minister - a close confidant of Hitler, an ambitious schemer and flagrant libertine. And Bernie Gunther, former Berlin homicide bull, now forced to do favors for Joseph Goebbels at the propaganda minister's command.

Cobra

Why would a mathematics professor from Cambridge University, renting a holiday home outside Cape Town, require a false identity and three bodyguards? And where is he, now that they are dead? The only clue to the bodyguards' murder is the snake engraved on the shell casings of the bullets that killed them. Investigating the massacre, Benny Griessel and his team find themselves being drawn into an international conspiracy with shocking implications.

The Stationmaster's Farewell

Guy Fawkes Night, 1857. Joel Heygate is the popular stationmaster at Exeter St David's railway station - an impressive figure of a man replete with frock coat and top hat, bushy eyebrows and walrus moustache. But when the charred remains of a body are discovered in the embers of the town's annual Bonfire Night celebration, everyone is horrified when it becomes clear that they belong to Mr Heygate.

A Death in Tuscany: Michele Ferrara, Book 2

In the picturesque Tuscan hill town of Scandicci, the body of a girl is discovered. Scantily dressed, she is lying by the edge of the woods. The local police investigate the case - but after a week, they still haven’t even identified her, let alone got to the bottom of how she died. Frustrated by the lack of progress, Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara, head of Florence’s elite Squadra Mobile, decides to step in.

Dressed for Death

Commissario Guido Brunetti's hopes for a refreshing family holiday in the mountains are once again dashed when a gruesome discovery is made in Marghera--a body so badly beaten the face is completely unrecognizable. Brunetti searches Venice for someone who can identify the corpse but is met with a wall of silence. He then receives a telephone call from a contact who promises some tantalizing information.

Death and Judgment: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

A truck crashes and spills its dangerous cargo on a treacherous road in the Italian Dolomite mountains. Meanwhile, in Santa Lucia, a prominent international lawyer is found dead aboard an intercity train. Suspecting a connection between the two tragedies, Commissario Guido Brunetti digs deep for an answer, stumbling upon a seedy Venetian bar that holds the key to a crime network that reaches far beyond the laguna.

The Flood

Florence, 1986: A seemingly inexplicable attack on a church fresco of Adam and Eve brings together an unlikely couple: Julia Wellbeloved, an art student, and Pino Fratelli, a semi-retired detective who longs to be back in the field. Their investigation leads them to the secret society that underpins the city, and back to the darkness in Florence’s past: the night of the great flood in 1966…

Publisher's Summary

Inspector Zen receives the order he has been dreading all his professional life: his next posting is to Sicily. Set against the backdrop of the 3000 year old city of Catania, Blood Rain reveals Aurelio Zen at his most desperate and driven.

It was too gruesome and gory. There were images which are, sadly, seared into my memory that I would sooner forget.I've read several others in the series, and have loved Zen. Here he seems flat. Though to be honest, I stopped listening after the description of particularly brutal Mafia hit.

Would you ever listen to anything by Michael Dibdin again?

Maybe.

Which character – as performed by Michael Kitchen – was your favorite?

Aurelio Zen

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

This story seems to leave Zen and follow other characters. You get the feeling that Zen is a support character. Little stories are threaded into this story and are fascinating in themselves. Then everything turns on a dime. Zen is back in the centre of the story, and what is happening can only happen to him with his luck. This story ties up nicely with a great cliff hanger. Not my favourite of his books but close to the top of the list. Pity the next three books are not on Audible:1. And Then You Die2. Medusa3. Back to BolognaI'll have to go 'old school' and turn pages to find out what happens to our intrepid hero. Michael Dibdin has really developed a great story line and his writing has really become a dream to listen to. Michael Kitchen is superb in his narration and I can't wait to get on with the next instalment of an Aurelia Zen Myster 'And Then You Die'.

Forget the promises and deals made to Zen in 'A long Finish', Zen is in Sicily.

As the old families are being broken up, new groups are emerging. Far from being a promoted member of the elite, Zen finds himself caught up with both the police and Mafia all too ready to want him very dead.Yet again I found the internet a great resource to pull up maps of Sicily and existing railway tracks and find images of towns and cities. And yet again I had 'itchy feet'..Well read by Michael Kitchen, Dibdin's novel has mant a story within a story. A great listen.

Sadly the complete series is not available to Australians on Audible, due no doubt to strangely odd and unusual thinking of publishers and, out of date (19th Century) views on copyright.

This Michael Dibdin masterpiece is beautifully rendered by Michael Kitchen's precise and understated performance. The vicious thuggery of the of the Mafia clans and the interested parties of the Italian state, are interwoven with the Wodehouse world of Zen's inner life and Michael Dibdin's painfully believable picture of; ineptitude, misogyny and corruption that sap the best efforts of the very few good people. Please let the, now sadly terminated, Aurelio Zen canon be completed in spoken word as a matter of urgency. In the meantime many thanks for this most diverting of recordings.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Jane

1/7/11

Overall

"Cold, tense and gripping"

I absolutely loved this recording. Michael Kitchen's reading is perfectly matched to the detached style of the book and the ending had me completely gripped. We need more readings please, three of the books is not enough.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Bibliophile

Cumbria

8/24/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"Excellent series"

I have enjoyed all the Aurelio Zen books, although I'm not sure about Michael Kitchen as a reader - may be because of the tv series.Interesting to hear something about the way the Mafia has been changing in Sicily

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

chris

London, United Kingdom

8/6/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"A reasonably good tale spoiled by uneven reading."

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I had to miss out whole chunks of the recording as they were intolerably badly read. Kitchen's voice may be good for television acting, but is annoying as a narrator since its tendentious pauses are so ridiculously placed as to make one feel as though he has no understanding what he is reading.

Would you be willing to try another book from Michael Dibdin? Why or why not?

Dibdin's writing is trying to give more than a thriller, but its grasp of Italian history is cursory and punctuates the story rather than illuminates it. The irrelevant passages of plot filler do not add to the depth of the story, only to the length of the book.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Kitchen ought not to narrate books. He is a reasonable television actor but listening to his idiosyncratic pacing for more than ten minutes make my toes curl.

Was Aurelio Zen: Blood Rain worth the listening time?

Not really. And I would not read anything else narrated by Kitchen. He's nearly as bad as Scott Brick.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

susan

london, United Kingdom

6/13/11

Overall

"Great story, great reader."

The excellent Michael Kitchen in his singular way brings this intelligent and exciting book to life. We absolutely loved it, it sustained us on long motorway journeys through France, and made us look forward to them! I hope there will be more of him reading these books (and others) he is terrific.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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